Neurovagrant

Have left this tumblr sadly neglected for way too long. Going to start posting again soon. Craving...

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:02:59 -0500

Have left this tumblr sadly neglected for way too long. Going to start posting again soon. Craving the immediacy of tumblr versus my actual blog.

"Thirty years on, the future will still be boring. I see an endless suburbanization, interrupted by..."

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:07:13 -0400

“Thirty years on, the future will still be boring. I see an endless suburbanization, interrupted by notes of totally unpredictable violence: the sniper outside the supermarket, the bomb outside suburban hypermarket, the madman with the Kalashnikov in McDonald’s. But this random violence is totally without connection to people’s everyday lives. This will lead to a feeling that the world is arbitrary and illogical, insane even. That’s a frightening kind of landscape.”

- JG Ballard, 2002, by way of Warren Ellis

That Alameda County APC/"tank" they rolled to meet protesters? Bought no-bid from Blackwater. The fucks.

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:22:00 -0400

That Alameda County APC/"tank" they rolled to meet protesters? Bought no-bid from Blackwater. The fucks.

"The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck. ~"

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:45:28 -0400

“The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck. ~”

- William James via @philo_quotes (via lonesomeliz)

"Therefore, the purpose of this written thesis is to interrogate, reveal, and ultimately work to..."

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:41:08 -0400

“Therefore, the purpose of this written thesis is to interrogate, reveal, and ultimately work to transform radically the intangible effects of the invisible punishing machine on our bodies, minds and souls.”

"a pattern of local, opportunistic manipulation of a non-disposable complex system that causes a..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:47:34 -0400

“a pattern of local, opportunistic manipulation of a non-disposable complex system that causes a lowering of its conceptual integrity, creates systemic debt and moves intelligence from systems into human brains.”

- Venkatesh Rao

"You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:14:41 -0400

“You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.”

- Mona Eltahawy

Stoned With Semen: Christianity's War on Women

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:13:39 -0400

It’s Uncle Ian storytime.

The writer Warren Ellis relayed a story about Hypatia of Alexandria. She was a philosopher, an intellectual powerhouse. She also refused suitors with reckless vehemence. Upon one man professing his love for her, Hypatia waved her bloody menstrual rag in his face and shouted “This! This is what you love, young man.”

Hypatia was dragged through the streets and stoned to death by a Christian mob in about AD 415.

Her primary work at that point was the beginnings of calculus, something she’s often not given any due credit for. Mankind didn’t get back to calculus for another thousand years. Take a second and imagine that, right there, the patriarchy and its holy mandate had buggered off and left her to complete her work. That’s scientific achievement one thousand years ahead of the curve. Moon landings by about 1200. Flying cars and jetpacks by…when? 1300?

Ellis uses this story to talk about a world without Christianity. I sympathize, but that’s not quite what I’m about. After all we have to play the hand we’re dealt. What I want to do is prevent the next stoning.

That there’s a war on women in America is undeniable. That it’s fueled by right-wing Christians is also undeniable. I don’t see legislation about male contraception, about condoms or about Viagra. Because God knows if you’re old enough to need the little blue pill that it’s only for procreation. Rick Santorum, one of the GOP frontrunners, espouses these views daily. Mainstream media echoes him constantly. Rush Limbaugh waves his hateful microphone like a Righteous Phallic Bludgeon and I don’t think we need to argue over who exactly his supporters are.

This is all coming to a point: Hypatia was a blueprint for today’s Christian Right. Women are at best empty vessels there to be filled according to this worldview. They’re not allowed to be or fill themselves. And the only thing they can fill the world with isn’t knowledge but progeny, more arrows in the quiver of God.

Woe unto a society that can no longer murder a woman for refusing to populate god’s quiver, right? Need to get back to those Basic Christian Values. No longer acceptable to preach to them through blunt force trauma. So these Taliban for Jesus choose a different stroke instead: pregnancy by legislation. By trying to force their morals into law the options to prevent or terminate pregnancy are ruthlessly narrowed. We are now stoning our Hypatias with semen. Not quite as easy for a woman to do groundbreaking scientific work when she’s pregnant, constantly shamed and has the choice to allow state-sponsored foreign object rape by ultrasound or keep an unwanted fetus.

We can’t kill her anymore so let’s just kill her options. Praise be to god, and population sustainability and personal choice to be damned. Progress be damned. Calculus be damned.

But praise be to god.

Foreclosure Mathematics

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:57:00 -0400

According to the Wall Street Journal, last year Fannie Mae lost 35 cents on every dollar of debt that went through foreclosure. As of a few weeks ago the average underwater mortgage (mortgage where the borrower owes more than the home is worth) on homes worth less than $250K* was underwater by about $70K. If Fannie Mae had helped homeowners by cutting the balance owed by that average underwater amount Fannie would have taken a 30% hit instead of the 35% hit they recorded and homeowners would be in a much better position. Of course, if Fannie Mae helped homeowners they wouldn’t be in a position to auction off to their business partners $320 million worth of foreclosed homes in bulk.

*Might’ve been $300K, memory is failing me right now.

Double-barreled .45 handgun, 1911 model. I want to try this...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:41:08 -0400

Double-barreled .45 handgun, 1911 model. I want to try this sucker out.

Prepping some acrylic board for painting last night.

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:51:21 -0500

Prepping some acrylic board for painting last night.

Photo

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:50:31 -0500

Geoengineering and Dissent

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:23:51 -0500

Thinking today about the prospect of governments and corporations quickly latching onto geoengineering as a way to muffle dissent. Technology’s not quite there yet, but pretty close. I vaguely remember something about China pregaming the Beijing Olympics by seeding clouds ahead of time to try and prevent rain during the actual event. Think about the PRC doing that in the event of a mass protest. Or, hell, the US government or UK government doing it, for that matter. Seeding clouds on a day of mass action to make the rain pour down. Wells-Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto hacking the temperature to make it uncomfortable so that only the hardcore show up. If they’ll do it with tear gas and sound cannons, why wouldn’t they with rainclouds and heat waves or cold snaps? The military applications for weather creation and diversion are many and given how we’ve seen so much military technology turned back around to deal with domestic civil unrest, I can’t imagine this tech will be any different.

Deterrence and Moral Persuasion Effects on Corporate Tax Compliance

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:00:35 -0500

Previous studies on tax compliance have focused primarily on the tax-reporting behavior of individuals. This study reports results from a randomized field test of the effects of deterrence and moral persuasion on the tax-reporting behavior of 4,395 corporations in Israel. Two experimental groups received tax letters, one conveying a deterrent message and the other a moral persuasion message. Three types of measures are used to evaluate compliance based on the magnitude of the difference-in-differences of means in 1) gross sales values reported to the authority, 2) tax dollars paid to the authority, and 3) tax deductions. Overall, both deterrence and moral persuasion approaches do not produce statistically significant greater compliance compared with control conditions. These results do not support the ability of a policy of sending tax letters to increase substantively the reporting of true tax liability or tax payments by corporations. However, these results also show that moral persuasion can be counterproductive: Corporations in this experimental group show an increase rather than a decrease in tax deductions, which translates into loss of state revenues. The implications for theory, research, and tax policy are discussed.

Kaishakunin

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:25:12 -0500

A kaishakunin (Japanese: 介錯人) is an appointed second whose duty is to behead one who has committed seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide, at the moment of agony.

"Corrupt the children. Teach them that It Gets Better, because they will make it Better."

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:25:43 -0500

“Corrupt the children. Teach them that It Gets Better, because they will make it Better.”

- http://blog.bl00cyb.org/2012/01/fighting/

UC Berkeley Sociologists Debate Occupy

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:32:09 -0500

UC Berkeley Sociologists Debate Occupy:

Love the idea that Occupy is about the precariat rather than proletariat.

What’s a trip to the shooting range without a 3D zombie target...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:58:00 -0500

What’s a trip to the shooting range without a 3D zombie target that bleeds? Whole line of these targets coming out, from the monstrous to the nazi to the, er, provocative?

"Speculating last week about possible causes of the latest failure, the director of the Russian space..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:46:23 -0500

“Speculating last week about possible causes of the latest failure, the director of the Russian space agency said that Phobos-Grunt might have been hit by an antisatellite weapon from an unspecified source while over the Western Hemisphere and out of direct observation from Russia. He also mentioned possible technical flaws.”

- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/science/space/russias-phobos-grunt-mars-probe-crashes-into-pacific.html

How To Carry A Concealed Weapon Whilst Wearing A Dress

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:25:26 -0500

How To Carry A Concealed Weapon Whilst Wearing A Dress:

In case you needed to know.